Where those associated with Western films from around the world are laid to rest.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

RIP Antony Holland

Local theatre legend Antony Holland dies at 95

The Georgia
Straight

By Janet Smith

July 30, 2015

Antony Holland, Canada's oldest living actor, founder of
Studio 58, and a massive local-theatre pioneer, died on Wednesday (July 29) at
95, according to the Langara acting school's Facebook page.

It reported he
"passed away earlier today at Nanaimo General Hospital. At this time we
are awaiting details. Once more information is known we will share with all of
you. For now, all of us at Studio 58 are deeply saddened by this news and
extend our heartfelt condolences to his family." Studio 58 also updated
its cover photo to a shot of an exhilarated Holland receiving the Order of
Canada in 2014.

Holland had
distinguished himself during the Second World War by organizing theatre
productions with his fellow soldiers (including during the North African
campaign). His famous personal quote on IMDB is "I'm a really good actor,
but I'm a terrible soldier." Later, he had a flourishing postwar career
acting, directing, and teaching at Britain's famous Bristol Old Vic Theatre
School. But in 1957, he moved to Canada with a different dream. He once told
the Straight, “I loved gardening and I thought I’d come and grow vegetables and
sell them.”

Fortunately for us, he didn't just remain a green thumb.

Soon after coming
here, he founded an innovative theatre school at a Maple Ridge prison, the
Haney Correctional Institute, in 1960.(“You’d be locked in the gym to rehearse,
and you’d suddenly need a prop or something, so you’d have to go to the door
and get a guard to double-unlock the door," he once recalled to the
Straight.) In 1965 he launched the first theatre-arts program at Vancouver City
College, which would evolve into Studio 58 (now at Langara campus). Holland
retired from his post heading the program in 1984.

He once told the
Straight: “Somebody had laid down ground rules for this program which consisted
of a couple of acting classes a week, and then they were going to farm the
students out to other departments like psychology and business administration and
physical education. And I realized that’s not going to equip somebody to be an
actor, and so I went to the administration and said: ‘This program is for the
birds. My mandate is to give them the skills so they can earn their living, not
go on to university.’ ” Holland designed a more practical curriculum, which
included dance and musical training, and hired theatre professionals as
part-time instructors. Although enrollment was initially small—he accepted all
five students who applied into the first class—the program now receives
hundreds of applications from around North America and has produced some of the
city and country's finest actors. The school is gearing up for its 50th
anniversary this fall.

Some of his most well
known roles included an appearance as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at
Studio 58 in 2008 and as King Lear there in 2005. At the 2008 show, he played
other characters as well. The production was, almost unimaginably, what he
dubbed "Free-Fall Shakespeare”: each night of the performance at the
Langara theatre, the audience would help choose which actors would play which
characters, and in performer-director Holland’s case, that meant the crowd
could decide whether he’d be Old Gobbo, the Duke of Venice, or Shylock.

Receiving the Jessie
award for his acclaimed role in Tuesdays With Morrie at the Arts Club in 2006,
he quipped, "My advice to everyone is if you spend 70 years in the theatre
you may get the part you really want."

Holland also had a
storied TV and movie career, in everything from McCabe & Mrs. Miller to The
Accused to Battlestar Galactica. He said of appearing on film opposite
Katharine Hepburn “I got panicked for the first time in my life. I thought, ‘I
had that woman’s portrait on my wall when I was 12'."

More recently he
lived on Gabriola Island, where he established a new company at the Gabriola
Theatre Centre.

He held a Lifetime
Equity membership, membership in the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame, and many
Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards and lifetime achievement awards; there is also
a scholarship at Studio 58 in his honour.

Holland had
celebrated his 95th birthday by acting in Nanaimo in March in Harold Pinter's
The Caretaker.

About Me

Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1946 I have a BA degree in American History from Cal St. Northridge. I've been researching the American West and western films since the early 1980s and visiting filming sites in Spain and the U.S.A. Elected a member of the Spaghetti Western Hall of Fame 2010.